By Joan Alperin Schwartz
‘Out There On Fried Meat Ridge Road’ is so entertaining that I’ve seen it not once…but twice.
This is a funny, touching play, written by Keith Stevenson, who also stars in it.
Keith plays JD, a seemingly innocent/naive man, who lives in a small, dirty, rundown motel room somewhere in West Virginia.
One day, JD decides he’d like to expand his circle of friends, so he advertises for a roommate and…
Mitchell (Neil McGowan) a man with sweaty palms and a broken heart, shows up at his door.
Mitchell assumes he was answering an ad to share an apartment…not a dive motel room. Well in all fairness, there are two beds. Of course, one of them is covered in clothing that smells from deer pee.
Anyway, Mitchell, having no where else to go, sticks around and very soon, he is greeted by several damaged, endearing characters that have more to them than meets the eye…Well, almost…
There’s Marlene (Kendrah McKay) an artist, meth addict who’s hopelessly in lover with her cheating boyfriend, Tommy (Jason Huber).
Tommy is a pseudo poet who hails from New Jersey. Yes,he does cheat on his girl friend, but only with women named…Marlene…(even if they way 500 lbs) Tommy’s afraid he’ll forget their name.
Lastly, there’s Flip (Michael Prichard) the owner of this not so fine establishment…..Flip is a quasi racist with a heart of gold. He’s been looking after JD since his mother died.
This is a play that will have you laughing non stop. It will also touch your heart, because in the end…’Out There On Fried Meat Ridge’ is about human connection…Something everyone, wants and needs…even if you’re too screwed up to know it.
Guillermo Cienfuegos did an excellent job of directing these fine actors.
The play runs just a little over one hour.
Tickets are $20.00. Call 310-822-8392 or go to www.PacificResidentTheatre.com to purchase them.
‘Out There On Fried Meat Ridge Road’ opened, April 26, 2012 and plays Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8pm. The last performance is Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 3:00 p.m.
Don’t miss it.
Pacific Resident Theatre is located at 707 Venice Blvd (four blocks west of Lincoln Blvd)
December 19, 2012
Keith Stevenson and Kendrah McKay in “A Fried Meat Christmas”
The author Kathleen Duey once encountered Ray Bradbury in an elevator and asked what advice he could give a beginner. “Ass glue,” he replied.
It should be sold in stores, because I could use a gallon or two. In fact, I got up from my chair and paced around outside after I finished that last sentence. The biggest problem I find as a writer is that it is so easy not to write. But there is one thing that will keep my butt in the chair — a deadline. More to the point, the fear of not meeting a deadline. So, to finish (start, actually) my first full-length play (70 minute one-act, actually) I forced myself into a deadline.
Keith Stevenson
I’ve belonged to Pacific Resident Theatre since 1998. My first several years at PRT were spent primarily as an actor and sound designer. Then, a few years ago, I joined PRT’s Writers’ Group — a very talented collective, from which many wonderful works have sprung, including Vince Melocchi’s Julia, which ran Off-Broadway after a mainstage production at PRT, and Valerie Dillman’s Sarah’s War, which had a critically-acclaimed run at the Hudson earlier this year after a workshop production at PRT.
In the latter part of 2011, the group decided to present a series of new works. That December, we would hold public readings of full-length plays penned by our members. As we went around the room for a head count of whose plays would be read, I said, “I’ll do mine.” Of course, I hadn’t written page one of “mine.”
I gave the group a title, Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Road (the last word of which was later shortened to ‘Rd.‘ through a poster printing error, but hey, the printing was free, so I kept it). Fried Meat Ridge Road is a real road outside of my hometown of Keyser, West Virginia. The name had always fascinated me. It seemed the ideal setting for the farce I wanted to write. (Hooker Hollow Road, also outside Keyser, had fascinated me as well, but that would have been a much different play.)
Keith Stevenson and Neil McGowan
I had a deadline of December 18. I stared at the moon every night until December 1. When I had concluded the moon was not going to write the play for me, I took my netbook to the Cinema Bar on Sepulveda, where there is a back patio. I like to write outdoors.
All I had were two characters from a screenplay I had abandoned a long time ago: JD, a somewhat bizarre, but affable hillbilly of otherworldly origin and Mitchell, a straight man who answers a “roommate wanted” ad that JD had listed. The original screenplay started with 35 pages of backstory for Mitchell, but once he entered the room with JD, writer’s block set in for the next several years. So as a challenge, I started my stage play there, with the moment that Mitchell walks in the door. With the help of my writing partner, Jack Daniels, I wrote the first five pages that day. I returned the next day to the patio and wrote another eight pages. Decent progress, but one problem — I was now $90 in to the Cinema Bar. The Rockefellers may have family in West Virginia, but I ain’t one of them.
Keith Stevenson
The next few nights I wrote in my driveway with my netbook set on the tailgate of my pick-up truck. Then my friend and fellow PRTer, Norman Scott (who would later become the production’s scenic designer), offered me an empty apartment in the building he manages in Inglewood as a writing studio. I burned through the last 30 pages of the script there, desperately coming up with jokes from the stuff I saw lying around (a ladder, a fake-rock key safe — believe it or not, they worked.)
I finished the play with 24 hours to spare before the reading. Deadline met. The reading was such a success, we decided to do a three-week workshop production in March of this year. PRT’s artistic director Marilyn Fox gave us the green light to keep going. That turned into a six-month run — six of the best months of my life, spent with cast members Neil McGowan, Kendrah McKay, Michael Prichard, Jason Huber, Alex Fernandez and Scott Jackson — led by our director, Guillermo Cienfuegos. Near the end of the run, we were honored with an Ovation Award nomination for playwriting for an original play.
The success and themes of that play have led to a sequel, A Fried Meat Christmas, which is now currently playing alongside the original at Pacific Resident Theatre. Christmastime is fitting for a continuation of the original story, given JD’s somewhat holy(?) origin.
A Fried Meat Christmas, Pacific Resident Theatre, 707 Venice Boulevard, Venice 90291. Tonight and Friday, 8 pm. It’s paired with Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Rd. as a back-to-back double bill on Saturday 8 pm and Sunday 3 pm. Tickets: $20 per show; $30 if purchase tickets for both at same time. www.pacificresidenttheatre.com. 310-822-8392.
***All A Fried Meat Christmas production photos by Guillermo Cienfugos
Keith Stevenson penned the plays, Out There On Fried Meat Ridge Rd. and A Fried Meat Christmas as well as the films In the A.M. Of Dec 26th (On The Corner Of Cunningham & Kongosak in Barrow), The Magic Castle Presents The Amazing Joshua (Presto) Shapiro, and All That Glitters.
Well, Christmas is over and, unfortunately, due to unmitigating circumstances, I was unable to review a very funny play in time for your holiday pleasure. A Fried Meat Christmas, a sequel to Keith Stevenson’s hit comedy, Out There On Fried Meat Ridge Rd., that was presented by the Pacific Resident Theatre Company in May of 2012 (see my review), recently held aloft at the same theatre as their 2012 Christmas offering. I must admit that it was every bit as hilarious as the prequel.
Stevenson brought back all of the same characters who became so popular with audiences who developed a near cult-like reputation for JD ((Keith Stevenson), his closest buddy Mitchell (Neil McGowan), and the rest of the gang, Tommy (Alex Fernandez), Marlene (Kendrah McKay), and Flip (Shawn Boyd). Added to this production was Chad (Oona Wood) and two “Adorable Carolers” (Esabelle Logo and Mattius Vojar).
If you saw this lively comedy, I am sure you will agree with me that it was great entertainment. And if you did not see it, let us all look forward to the return of JD and the gang in a future production that we hope will take place on “Fried Meat Ridge Rd.” in the near future at the Pacific Resident Theatre, located at 703 Venice Blvd. in Venice. The show has been extended for two more double-header performances on January 5 & 6, 2013.
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian playwright, most notable for his play, A Doll’s House, which premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, December 21, 1879. The play was critically acclaimed due to its devisive theme (for its time) women’s rights, though Ibsen claimed that he did not consciously strive for the promotion of the women’s rights movement.
Ingmar Bergman (1918- 2007) was a Swedish writer, producer, and director for stage, film and television. Thinking that Ibsen did not go far enough with the ending of this controversial play, Bergman adapted Ibsen’s A Doll House in Swedish and re-titled it Nora. The English translation, by Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker, is running now at The Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice. It is an intriguing production directed by company member Dana Jackson.
The play tells of the marriage of Torvald Helmer (Brad Greenquist) and Nora Helmer (Jeanette Driver). Torvald has a commanding personality and treats his beautiful wife as if she were a child, and at the same time, suppressing her and doting on her. She, however, believes that she has the perfect marriage, especially now that Torvald has been promoted at the bank and they won’t have any more financial problems. But Nora has a great many problems unknown to her husband, and when he is finally made aware of them, their marriage is totally transformed. It is than that Nora realizes that their marriage was not what she thought it was and that Torvald is not the man she thought he was. The play ends with a stunning climax, that in its day, was exceptionally contentious.
The adaptation by Bergman, though like the original by Ibsen, is spellbinding to the very end. Driver is absolutely the perfect model for Nora in her performance. Greenquist plays a domineering man, while at the same time, he can be playful and sexy with his wife as he fulfills his role. Other pertinent characters to the play, and extremely well presented, are Martha Hackett (Mrs. Linde), Scott Conte), and Bruce French (Doctor Rank).
Nora plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 PM, Sundays at 3 PM through January 27, 2013, at Pacific Resident Theatre, located at 705 1/2 Venice Blvd. in Venice, CA. Tickets are available online at www.PacificResidentTheatre.com, or by calling (310) 822-8392.
December 6, 2012, 2:53 p.m.
Review: ‘Nora’s’ excellent cast cuts to the heart of a masterwork – By F. Kathleen Foley
Jeanette Driver and Brad Greenquist (Vitor Martins)
Creator of such epic projects as “Fanny and Alexander” and “Scenes From a Marriage” — both later edited into feature-length format — Ingmar Bergman hardly seems the go-to guy when it comes to condensing an existing script.
Yet “Nora,” Bergman’s briskly abbreviated version of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” translated to the English by Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker, distills Ibsen’s overflowing themes into a bitter but bracing demitasse.
First produced in the early ‘80s, the play receives a near-optimum staging from director Dana Jackson at Pacific Resident Theatre. In uniformly cogent performances, a superlative cast cuts to the emotional heart of Ibsen’s masterwork.
Casting petite and gamine Jeanette Driver as Nora and towering, obviously older Brad Greenquist as her husband, Torvald, emphasizes Torvald’s complete domination of his child-like wife. The actors’ inspired physicality — with Torvald looming and Nora seductively cringing — points up the underlying creepiness of their near-pederastic marriage.
Conversely, the moving romance between Nils Krogstad (Scott Conte), Nora’s blackmailer, and Nora’s old friend, Christine Linde (Martha Hackett) is devoid of artifice — a coming together of battered souls who can no longer afford illusion. As Nora’s admirer, terminally ill Doctor Rank, Bruce French balances wistful yearning with heroism.
But a few gratuitous segues do creep in. Jackson unwisely overblows Bergman’s coy indication that Nora and Torvald have sex just before Nora’s defection.
As Driver plays her, Nora is so stunned by Torvald’s self-serving display that she allows herself to be manipulated into bed, like a blow-up doll. Granted, that’s a bold interpretation — but it largely vitiates Nora’s final epiphany and undermines her moral stature at a critical juncture.
“Nora,” Pacific Resident Theatre, 705 1/2 Venice Blvd., Venice. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Jan. 27. $20-$28. (310) 822-8392. www.pacificresidenttheatre.com. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.
Ingmar Bergman’s adaptation of A Doll’s House restructures Henrik Ibsen’s fierce family drama, stripping the play to its emotional essence, a goal that’s underscored by director Dana Jackson’s spartan but evocative production. On a simple set consisting of some chairs, a Christmas tree in the back and, later, a bed, Jackson’s staging puts its emphasis where the play’s money is — on the subtext driving the car crash that is the marriage of Nora and Torvald Helmer. Brad Greenquist’s brutally curt and entitled Torvald comes across as the sort of business executive who sees a trophy wife as being merely part of his resume, while Jeanette Driver’s Nora, with surface-level bubbliness belying an interior desperation and, yes, horror, is subtle and touching. Add to this Martha Hackett’s wan, hard-used Mrs. Linde and Scott Conte’s self-loathingly desperate Krogstad, and the production boasts some incredibly nuanced characterizations. Although the decision (by Bergman, not Jackson) to add a dramatic, pace-interrupting sex scene to the final act jars, the clarity and power of the show’s performances make this a textbook dynamic production of the tragic drama. Pacific Resident Theatre, 705 ½ Venice Blvd, Venice; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through Jan. 27. (310) 822-8392, pacificresidenttheatre.com. (Paul Birchall)
‘NORA’ Incisevly Reinvigorates ‘A Doll’s House’
Photo Source: Vitor Martins
It’s seldom that a revision of a classic carries the riveting punch of “Nora,” now getting its overdue Los Angeles debut at Pacific Resident Theatre. This stark black-box take on Ingmar Bergman’s searing 1981 reduction of Henrik Ibsen’s immortal “A Doll’s House” grabs its viewers from the outset and never lets go.
A tinkling deluge of Edvard Grieg piano music from sound designer Keith Stevenson serves as conduit to Jeanette Driver’s definitive title heroine, first seen wrapping presents with carefully modulated childlike fervor. Enter the yeoman Brad Greenquist as husband Torvald Helmer, his paternalistic impulses in subtly detectable conflict with connubial desire, and thus begins a rethink that’s less a treatise on gender politics than an exploration of universal human dilemmas. Ruthlessly paring away domestic mechanisms and key elements of Ibsen’s 1879 landmark, including the Helmer children, which may unsettle purists, Bergman cuts to the heart of the narrative. It’s not your parents’ “Doll’s House,” but there’s no mistaking how boiling down Ibsen’s naturalism to its essentials exposes the marrow of the characters.
Accordingly, principals come and go from chairs located on each upstage wall. Merely that stylized choice yields mercurial grace notes: When antagonist Nils Krogstad returns from his menacing plea to Nora and Torvald rises to re-enter the fray, they share a passing glance worth volumes of academic footnotes. Delicate nuances abound, with director Dana Jackson exerting taut control over her actors and the text, translated by Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker into poised and specific conversational English. The sparseness, in which something as throwaway as repositioning an antique doll reverberates, honors Ibsen’s intent with Pinteresque acuity that reaches profundity by the apotheosis. Designer William Wilday’s swag-curtained portico and minimal furnishings, Daniella Cartun’s archetypal costumes, and Noah Ulin’s judicious lighting support the cinematic intensity of the whole.
So does the cast, beginning and ending with Driver’s breakout turn as Nora. Landing in visage and quality somewhere between Sally Hawkins and Mary-Louise Parker, Driver inhabits the role’s steady transformation from naiveté to enlightenment with preternatural perception. Her breathtaking work amid a brilliant ensemble brings indelible emotional force to the proceedings, devastating in the final faceoff with Greenquist’s superbly judged Torvald, a confrontation that Bergman’s adaptation and Jackson’s staging treat as the post-coital awakening of one soul against the desolation of another.
As doting, ailing Dr. Rank, Bruce French supplies another of his deeply felt portraits, with the age gap between his and Greenquist’s maturity and Driver’s fluttering girlishness underpinning Nora’s patriarchal psychology The acute Martha Hackett gives confidante Mrs. Linde a dry, seriocomic tone that conceals a fjord of regret, and Scott Conte makes an audaciously effective Krogstad, ineffably moving at his pivot point. Everyone’s unified commitment is a veritable model of “less is more” and drives this incisive reinvigoration of an ever-trenchant staple of the world repertory.
Presented by and at Pacific Resident Theatre, 705 1/2 Venice Blvd., Venice. Nov.10–Jan.27. (310) 822-8392
Critic’s Score A
by Les Spindle | November 9, 2012
With Nora, Pacific Resident Theatre is taking a fresh approach to A Doll’s House, master Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s classic 19th-century drama, which ends with a symbolic door slam that’s as meaningful as the one that concludes Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.
With Nora, Pacific Resident Theatre is taking a fresh approach to A Doll’s House, master Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s classic 19th-century drama, which ends with a symbolic door slam that’s as meaningful as the one that concludes Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.
Nora, the renowned filmmaker and stage director Ingmar Bergman’s rarely produced 1981 adaptation of Ibsen’s 1879 masterwork about a severely suppressed wife, opens Saturday at PRT.
Bruce French and Jeanette Driver in “Nora”
Dana Jackson, a longtime PRT member who frequently acts and directs at the company, is at the helm. Actor Bruce French, another longtime company member, and an Ovation and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award winner for his lead role in PRT’s 2009 production of Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version, appears in Nora as Dr. Rank.
Jackson and French discuss their experiences as members at the 26-year-old PRT, as well as the challenges and joys of bringing this daunting but ever-relevant story to life.
Bruce French
French balances his theater projects with television and film work. “I’m lucky to be able to go back and forth,” he says. “When I started out, I worked in New York for about five years. I was doing a play at Manhattan Theatre Club, and we were all sitting around moping that there was not enough work. But I was the only one who packed up my Volvo and came out here, in July 1975. I immediately became involved with an excellent bunch of emigrants from New York, in a company called LA Actors’ Theatre. I was thankful I had a place out here that I knew was a home.” However, that home eventually evolved into Los Angeles Theatre Center’s resident company, which collapsed in 1992.
PRT became French’s new artistic home in 2000. He cites The Browning Version, Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, and Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance as his most challenging and satisfying roles at PRT. In his private home, French is married to actress and singer Eileen Barnett.
Jackson, a native of New Jersey who moved to LA in 1996, also has worked in screen projects, but she says theater is more fulfilling, especially at PRT. “I’m a real company gal,” she asserts. Starting as a child performer, and appearing in the second national tour of Annie in the early 1980s, Jackson migrated westward, and became a PRT member in 2001. She discovered a passion for directing at PRT and since then has split her involvement between acting and directing in about 20 PRT productions.
She has directed her husband, company member Scott Jackson, in PRT productions (her original name is Dana Dewes, which is how she’s listed with Actors’ Equity and which is still reflected on the members’ page of the PRT website). She has directed French more than once. A highlight of her work with the company occurred when she served as associate director to PRT’s artistic director Marilyn Fox in the aforementioned 2009 production of The Browning Version.
Dana Jackson
Though Jackson loves to direct, she also greatly enjoys acting – “Big Love in 2002 was the first play I acted in at PRT. I also did Rocket to the Moon and The 60s, and others. My husband was also in Big Love, and in The Hasty Heart.”
French and Jackson speak of their simpatico working relationship. Says French, “When Marilyn wasn’t able to be there on Browning, Dana took over, and it was always a smooth transition. It was wonderful.”
Jackson elaborates on PRT’s basic modes of operation: “The actors comprise the membership, and then there’s an associate membership which includes directors and designers. There are about 100 members total at present.” Besides mainstage offerings for subscribers, PRT has a Co-op that presents member-generated workshops. This production of Nora began in the Co-op last winter but is now opening in a full production.
French and Jackson point out that PRT’s mainstage differs from many local theater companies in a significant way. There isn’t a season per se. Successful shows are allowed to play for extended runs before the next project goes up. Jackson asserts, “Decisions are based on what happens, what’s going on in the world, what actors are available. That way, I think you get the best possible thing — something that is inspired. ”
Justin Preston and Bruce French in the 2009 Pacific Resident Theatre production of “The Browning Version”
Browning offered an example of PRT’s sometimes flexible ways of working, when necessary — and the resulting challenges: “During Browning,” explains French, “I had this TV job called Crash, I think it was on Starz. There were three weeks prior to opening when I was back and forth, working in Santa Fe. Dana and Marilyn got tired of rehearsing the same scene over and over, but that’s all they could do at the time, because it was the only scene I wasn’t in. They watched it every night. I rehearsed my scenes in my hotel room every night. It was goofy. But we all do this because we want to do it. That’s the only reason we’re there.”
What is the secret to PRT’s long-running success as an award-winning company with a reputation for offering superior productions of wide-ranging works? Jackson responds, “I can’t speak about it before I came here, but I know the heart and soul of the company is Marilyn Fox. And certainly [the late] Gar Campbell, who was a great mentor to me. His touch is still everywhere in that theater.”
French chimes in. “I say the same thing. Marilyn has a profound understanding of her company. And she knows what material to put before us. I think that was sort of true of The Browning Version. When Marilyn first offered it to me, I asked myself what I could do with it. But she knew there was something about me that fit into that part, and she also said the play moved her very much. So as Dana says, it all goes back to Marilyn and her artistic choices and her dedication.”
Scott Conte and Martha Hackett in “Nora”
As PRT began developing Nora within the Co-op, Fox suggested Jackson as the director. Jeanette Driver, who is playing Nora, and Jackson began looking at various translations of Ibsen’s original play. Then Scott Conte (now playing Nils Krogstad) found Bergman’s adaptation, as translated into English by Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker. “We read it, and it was the one I really wanted to do,” Jackson says. It received a Co-op workshop last February. “We rehearsed two or three weeks, then we performed for three weekends — mostly to see if this translation would be a full enough experience for an evening.”
French chuckles when considering the hurdles faced in interpreting and tackling Ibsen’s rich but demanding work: “You have to wrestle him to the mat and pin him down. Then in this adaptation, Mr. Bergman put his spin on it.”
There are significant differences between the original Ibsen text and Bergman’s much shorter rethinking of A Doll’s House. “To begin with, the cast is different,” Jackson says, “There aren’t any children in this adaptation, and the children’s nanny isn’t in it. The set is certainly different, at least the way Bergman designed it, and the way it’s described in the script. It’s very sparse, not realistic in any way.”
Bruce French and Jeanette Driver
Nora was first presented at Munich Residenztheater, a company Bergman ran in Germany. It was part of an event that focused on three different women, from [August Strindberg’s] Miss Julie, a rework of one of his screenplays, Scenes from a Marriage, and A Doll’s House. On the West Coast, La Jolla Playhouse produced Nora in 1998.
“When you take away all the stuff from A Doll’s House on stage,” remarks Jackson, “what you end up with is how fine a play A Doll’s House is. I think that’s what Bergman wanted to put across, as he focused on the relationship between Nora and her husband. There is also some focus on the other characters in the play, and they’re all important, but the core is the husband-wife relationship.”
French comments, “For me, one of the main things Bergman has done is strip the script down to its essence. He had a sore point with Mr. Ibsen, in that the playwright had a tendency to explain everything. That detail was absolutely stripped away in this version, but sometimes to the confusion of the actors. The actor has to fill in a lot of the gaps. Dana is at the helm and she has kept her eye on the story, making it move forward, and making it clear what’s going on between the characters. All of the roles in Ibsen’s plays are so complex. It doesn’t matter if you are onstage for 15 minutes or 30 minutes or two hours, there’s always a lot going on. There are different ways of approaching these characters; various productions are so different. Dana has helped me find the approach that tells this story.”
After settling on Bergman’s adaptation, Jackson “didn’t go back and read A Doll’s House again. I have read it numerous times in the past, but I specifically didn’t want to have information in my mind that the audience didn’t have here. I didn’t want to assume that any of them had seen A Doll’s House. I wanted to have them watch the play this way, and have the story unfold.”
Brad Linquist and Jeanette Driver
Part of Ibsen’s fame stems from his hard-hitting exploration of timelessly pertinent issues, such as environmental concerns (An Enemy of the People) or how women cope in a sometimes intolerant society (Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House). Jackson believes that Bergman’s Nora adaptation retains an enormous amount of relevance. “The play really shows the points of view of two characters. I’ve been married almost 15 years now, and the play really speaks about the struggles between men and women. Even though women have come a long way, there are still issues. There are fundamental differences between human beings that have not changed at all. Hopefully that’s what we’re speaking to in this production.”
She notes that Ibsen’s mother was a very sympathetic figure in his life, adding: “That was coupled with other things I have researched — that Ibsen had a friend who went through a sort of similar thing to Nora. At the same time, Ibsen argued that he was not some kind of feminist writer. He said he was writing about humanity. That’s why I think the play is absolutely still poignant and resonant to everyone. We’ve had a great time with it.”
Nora, Pacific Resident Theatre, 705-1/2 Venice Blvd., Venice. Opens Saturday. Thu-Sat 8 pm, Sun, 3 pm. Dark Nov. 22. Tickets: $20-28. www.pacificresidenttheatre.com. 310-822-8392.
***All production photos by Vitor Martins
. . . “Sweet Thursday,” a world premiere adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1954 novel, now at Pacific Resident Theatre is a sequel to Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.” “Thursday” centers, once again, on marine biologist Doc, introduced in the previous novel. Just back from World War II, Doc seems to have lost his spark, prompting his old friends — namely, the hookers and indigents of the Row — to try and fix Doc up with Suzy (Lela Loren), the pretty new prostitute in town.
. . . Co-adaptors Matt McKenzie and Robb Derringer embrace Steinbeck’s colorful coterie of characters like long-lost friends in their ambitious love-fest of an adaptation. Yet both lack a grain of sand in their creative third eye, that requisite irritant that would allow them a truly objective squint at their endeavor. . .
As for the staging, McKenzie clearly intends to fill the stage with an effusion of color and movement — and often succeeds in that endeavor.
There are some solid laughs and several of the performances are quite endearing, especially Jeff Doucette’s boozy Mack, the narrator of the piece, Dennis Madden’s wistful, mad Seer, and Eric John Scialo’s Hazel, a huge and simple-minded soul who takes drastic action to help Doc. . .
“Sweet Thursday,” Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 30. $20-$28. (310) 822-8392. www.PacificResidentTheatre.com.
LA Times
By F. Kathleen Foley
August 23, 2012, 4:30 p.m.
Take a trip back 60 or so years to a sweeter, gentler time, when alcoholic bums were jovial and kind and bordello madams had a heart of gold. Robb Derringer and Matt McKenzie (who also directs) have beautifully adapted novelist John Steinbeck’s sequel to Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, into a three-act stage play with music. Steinbeck’s early line about how “gossamer threads of steel” connect everyone in this small community is diligently played out in the adorable love story that ensues. Doc (Joe McGovern) returns to his Northern California beach town after World War II to resume his marine biology experiments. Suzy (Lela Loren) is a fresh-off-the-bus cutie who is not cut out for working at Fauna’s brothel/finishing school. The motley crew of locals conspires to repay Doc’s enduring kindness with two separate schemes. Musical director London Shover shines playing bluesy steel-stringed guitar, while other colorful characters intermittently accompany him on flute, harmonica and muted trumpet. Performances are all pitched a little larger than life, but somehow it works. A highlight is a spirited swing dance number. The writers collaboratively weave comedy, humanity and insight into a delightful tale that is true to Steinbeck’s original. Chuck Erven’s authentically cluttered set and Audrey Eisner’s period costumes are perfect. Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through Sept. 30. (310) 822-8392, pacificresidenttheatre.com (Pauline Adamek)
